Laissez Faire Books is pleased to announce their very own Julian Sanchez
will host a Laissez Faire Books' forum discussion on "The Prisoner"
from Jan 11th - Jan 17th on our website: http://laissezfairebooks.com.

The Supreme Court on January 7 plunged into the thorny issue of how much
power the government has to dictate what people do with their land.

The principal question for the justices is whether the government must
compensate landowners whom it has temporarily banned from using their
property as they see fit. Justices must confront the vexing issue of whether
a constitutional ban on "taking" someone's land without compensation
applies to temporary government land-use bans.

The case involves hundreds of people who bought property on Lake Tahoe
and have waited about two decades for permission to build there, and the
eventual ruling could have far-reaching implications for local and state
leaders who use zoning ordinances to slow growth and protect the environment.

"Those people shouldn't be left flapping in the breeze with no compensation,"
attorney Michael M. Berger told justices.

He gave this scenario: "It's as if I took away your car for a year
and parked it in a garage. You still would have been without the use of
that car for a year."

Court members seemed sympathetic to landowners, including those who tired
of waiting and sold their property to the government. At the same time,
they noted the government's interest in limiting development. "The
justification is excellent - saving Lake Tahoe," said Justice Stephen
Breyer.

The court will decide the narrow issue of whether an initial moratorium,
from 1981-84, amounted to a taking. The landowners had sought $27 million
in damages. The case has made for strange bedfellows among conservatives
and the Bush administration.

The Tahoe Regional Planning Agency imposed a construction moratorium
because of concerns about burgeoning development that was changing the
color of Lake Tahoe, which is on the California-Nevada border.

About 700 families filed suit, and their case has gone before the 9th
U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals four times. The Supreme Court agreed to
hear the families' appeal last year.

John G. Roberts Jr., representing the planning agency, said the moratorium
was "a time-out, for a limited period."

The Supreme Court, under conservative Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist,
has repeatedly sided with property owners in land fights.

In this case, the Bush administration is on the other side.

Solicitor General Theodore Olson sparred with Rehnquist and Justice Antonin
Scalia over the landowners' predicament.

Olson said agencies should be allowed time to develop sensible plans,
as in this case, without having to pay landowners.

"I don't think this is a traditional moratorium. I think it's extraordinary,"
Scalia told Olson. "They couldn't use their property at all."

"Not every delay ... constitutes a taking," Olson said.

The Supreme Court has dealt with a similar case before, deciding in 1987
that governments must pay for temporary takings unless they are normal
and relate to the routine permitting process.

Michael Ramsey, a law professor at the University of San Diego, said
if the landowners win, "It would open the door to a tremendous number
of cases."

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy asked lawyers on January 7 if the city of
New York could be sued if it temporarily banned any rebuilding at the
World Trade Center site while the site's future was pondered.

A New Jersey man's plan to put George Washington's portrait back in the
classroom has been chopped down by politicians who didn't find his Yankee
Doodle plan so dandy.

"It's
absolutely astounding what's going on in our schools," said businessman
William Sanders, who created the Portraits of Patriots project in 1998
to reverse what he saw as the decline of American history's place in the
classroom.

Working from his home, Sanders frames prints of an original Washington
portrait engraved by William Marshall in 1862, and campaigns to distribute
them to schools.

"I thought that it would be a fitting project to commemorate Washington's
death by reintroducing his portrait back into the schools," he said.

Congress ordered the portraits placed in classrooms as part of a 1932
Washington's birthday anniversary celebration, though the pictures began
to disappear by the late 1960s, mainly due to the deterioration of non-archival
materials.

Sanders took his proposal to, among others, the New Jersey state Legislature.
There it was passed by the state Assembly, but died in a Senate committee.
And it's not receiving much support elsewhere.

"We feel it is not a necessary piece of legislation," said
Dawn Hiltner, spokesperson for the New Jersey Education Association. "There
were so many great men and women throughout U.S. history that it would
be an injustice to have George Washington singled out as the one person
to have his picture posted in every school."

Hiltner claimed the portraits would "not really do anything to help
the children's understanding of what he's done or the role he's accomplished."

That reaction astounded Sanders, who cited surveys showing one in four
American students can't even identify George Washington as the man on
the dollar bill.

Jeff Pasley, an assistant professor of history at the University of Missouri-Columbia,
does believe schools need to improve history education but finds the benefits
of hanging a portrait questionable. "One of the problems with the
whole portrait idea is choosing one picture or hanging a bunch of different
portraits to try and cover all of your bases," he said.

Portraits can also be seen as shrines in schools, he said, adding, "If
you build someone up as a kind of saint people get disillusioned very
easily."

But Sanders, a father of two teen-agers, won't be persuaded. "We
have generations of children now who aren't clear on historical facts,
and if we don't clear this up now we'll forget where we came from,"
he said.

Sanders has charged forward with his crusade to boost students' understanding
of the first president. He has personally donated about 20 paintings (at
$250 each), and sold off others with the help of various rotary clubs
and parent-teacher groups.

Sanders said he believes the teachings of Washington are as timely today
as they were when then-Lt. Col. Ulysses S. Grant III, grandson of the
18th president of the United States, delivered a 1930 speech to 
of all people  the National Education Association.

"Teach your pupils to know and admire George Washington, to carry
his example and companionship in their hearts," Grant said in the
speech, "and the country's destiny will be safe in the hands of the
next generation."

China nuclear weapons to be pointed at U.S.

China is expected to have between 75 and 100 long-range nuclear missiles
pointed at the United States by 2015, roughly quadruple the current number,
according to a CIA report released January 9.

Many of those intercontinental ballistic missiles will be on mobile launchers,
helping China maintain a nuclear deterrent against the vastly larger U.S.
missile force, says the report, titled "Foreign Missile Developments
and the Ballistic Missile Threat Through 2015."

Echoing earlier intelligence estimates, the report also says North Korea
and Iran will probably have long-range missiles capable of reaching the
United States by 2015. These assessments have been used to justify U.S.
plans for multibillion-dollar missile defense systems capable of shooting
down a limited ICBM attack on the continental United States.

The report draws together information and analyses from the CIA and other
U.S. intelligence.

Currently, China has about 20 silos with CSS-4 nuclear ICBMs capable
of reaching the United States, the report says. It also has a few medium-range,
submarine-launched ballistic missiles and probably one submarine from
which to launch them.

The Chinese military is developing three new missile systems, all of
which could be fielded by 2010, the report says. The Chinese may also
be able to mount multiple-independent re-entry vehicles  MIRVs 
on its older silo-based missiles. These enable a single missile to launch
warheads at several targets, vastly increasing potential damage.

China sees an expanded ICBM force necessary to overcome a U.S. missile
defense system, maintaining its ability to strike the U.S. mainland. This
would provide a deterrent during a conflict over Taiwan. While U.S. officials
insist the missile defense program is to defeat strikes by North Korea
and other "rogue" nations, some of those proposed defenses might
have been sufficient to shoot down all 20 Chinese ICBMs. Eighty missiles
would be too many, however.

China also is expanding its short-range ballistic missile force, and
will probably have several hundred by 2005, the report says. These are
armed with conventional warheads which could be used to bombard Taiwan
from the Chinese mainland.

North Korea, meanwhile, has halted missile flight-testing until at least
2003, although it continues to develop the Taepo Dong-2, a two-stage missile
that would be capable of reaching the western United States. North Korea
also probably has one or two nuclear weapons that could be mounted on
those missiles, the report says.

Iran, meanwhile, might be able to test a long-range missile around 2005,
the report says, but more likely won't have the capability to do so until
2010.

The report reflects some differences of opinion between U.S. intelligence
agencies, with one unidentified agency arguing that Iran won't be able
to test missiles able to reach the U.S. mainland even by 2015. Its projections
also assume each country's political direction will not change significantly
during the next 13 years.

Ongoing U.N. prohibitions prevent Iraq from importing most of the equipment
and expertise it needs to create an ICBM, the report says, but if those
were lifted, Iraq could rapidly develop such weapons with substantial
foreign assistance.

Russia's strategic missile force will continue to get smaller, but Russia
will still have far and away the largest nuclear missile inventory capable
of hitting the United States, the report says.

Terrorists aren't expected to employ long-range missiles to deliver nuclear
and other weapons of mass destruction on the United States, the report
says.